Introducation for the RailsGirls Berlin page #171
Description
Sabine has sent me the following email and she has allowed me to publish it here so we can come up with good answers together.
Some of her questions, especially the later ones, are quite centered on the coaches. I think it would be a good idea to present all of our perspectives, but mostly your's (students') perspectives strongly, too. I guess she would probably be perfectly cool if you just added more questions so you can express whatever you have on your mind or want to say.
I've added my own answers below. Everyone chime in.
On Jan 9, 2013, at 9:24 PM, Sabine Geithner [email protected] wrote:
Hi guys,
I want to make an introduction to all ongoing project groups for the rails girls berlin page. Can you answer the following questions to me (in german is good as well? It would be cool if you could email back until Sunday so I can start working on the articles.
If you think some of the questions are silly, just leave them blank. If you know anyone else who is coaching a project group, please let me know. Thank you! :)
General Questions:
What is the project of your group? (Short description)
How did you come up with it? (Was it a group decision, did you suggest it, did someone fro the group suggest it)
Where and when / how often do you meet?
How many people are in your group?
Can people still join?
What's the max number of people you'd like to teach?
How can "students" get in touch?More personal questions:
What is the biggest challenge when teaching programming?
Do you have a main focus when teaching?
How do you structure your workshops/meet-ups?
Why did you decide to coach a project group?
What is the best part about coaching a project group?Thanks again!
Sabine
Here's how I'd answer the questions:
What is the project of your group? (Short description)
We have started out learning some Ruby basics before we have then built a simple application that turns texts into pictures that are composed of colored squares where each square's color refers to a certain letter. We've built this as a command line application that outputs static HTML, as a Sinatra and finally as a Rails application. We have used this application as an example for learning basic concepts like test-driven development, common web application architecture, HTTP, MVC, using Ruby gems for plugging in functionality etc.
For 2013 we are planning to now start a new project that allows people like conference or event organisers to find female speakers, in collaboration with a project group that has been founded for this purpose ("SpeakerInnnen-Liste").
We also plan to further expand our experience in co-coaching at RailsGirls beginners workshops and present on meet-ups and maybe conferences.
How did you come up with it? (Was it a group decision, did you suggest it, did someone fro the group suggest it)
At our first meeting almost every attendee presented an idea for an application that they wanted to build and what they hoped to get out of these meetings.T Essentially everyone wanted to build an application in order to learn Ruby and expand on their experiences at the original RailsGirls workshop. We've discussed these ideas and eventually decided to build one of them (the "text to squares" application) as a group, using this as an example application for learning Ruby.
Where and when / how often do you meet?
We have started [when exactly?] and meet every Monday at the Travis CI office (Prinzessinnenstr 20, 5th floor, above BetaHaus).
How many people are in your group?
There are now 5 attendees and 3 coaches (Sven, Matt, Konstantin, taking turns spontaneously)
Can people still join?
Yes, at any time.
What's the max number of people you'd like to teach?
For a beginners group 5-7 people is the ideal size in my opinion. One wants some space for flexibility so people can miss classes (nobody can attend every week), a sufficiently big group in order to get some group dynamics going and keep the whole thing interesting even though everyone has different ideas, interests and backgrounds. On the other hand one also wants to be able to respond to everyone on the group individually.
How can "students" get in touch?
We communicate a lot by opening issues on GitHub :)
https://github.com/svenfuchs/text-to-squares/issues
But you can also just tweet at [list all of our twitter handles]
What is the biggest challenge when teaching programming?
That's a pretty tough question and it'd probably deserve a full blog post. But maybe in essence, for me personally, the answer is something along the following:
For me the biggest challenge when teaching programming is to let go. Whatever works well in my own mind often times does not work at all while trying to explain programming to newcomers. I need to be able to spontaneously throw away my plan, come up with something new or just adjust to wherever the "energy" flows.
The first most mind-blowing experience along these lines was to realise: We are used to climb the stairs and do all sorts of things while doing so, we think about something completely different, talk to people, maybe even on the phone, and search our pockets for the keys meanwhile. To me writing code is like climbing stairs. As developers we think about all sorts of things when we write code, like the customer's interest, good code design, collaboration with others, maintainability, everything. But we don't think about the code itself in terms of syntax of basic constructs. When we discuss things in English we think about these things, we don't think about English. Teaching newcomers means to explain how to climb the stairs though.
Do you have a main focus when teaching?
Motivate students to go beyond themselves.
How do you structure your workshops/meet-ups?
We don't have any fixed structure, except that everyone brings some food which we'll enjoy while chatting. We adjust a lot to whatever the group brings up, but we also regularly go through unexpected tests, practices and new things that we believe are useful to do as a next step.
Why did you decide to coach a project group?
Another topic that might deserve a blog post. Maybe my own answer would be:
Because I want to do my share to improve our world. The world would be a better place when more women would realize that programming is easy, fun and, again, can help make the world a better place.
What is the best part about coaching a project group?
Two things: I learn so much about myself and about stuff I'm doing every day. But also: it's so much fun and so rewarding. When our students rocked away at coaching at a RailsGirls beginners workshop that just made me really, really proud.